Milestone Returns Some More with a Preview of Hardware Season One #1

Posted on August 8, 2021 by Jude Terror

DC Comics’ Milestone relaunch continues with Hardware Season One #1, in stores on Tuesday. Denys Cowan is on board for this one along with Brandon Thomas and Bill Sienkiewicz, and we’ve got a preview for you to check out below.

HARDWARE SEASON ONE #1 (OF 6)
DC Comics
0621DC011
0621DC012 – HARDWARE SEASON ONE #1 (OF 6) CVR B DENYS COWAN OLD SCHOOL CARD STOCK VAR – $4.99
0621DC013 – HARDWARE SEASON ONE #1 (OF 6) CVR C BILL SIENKIEWICZ NEW SCHOOL CARD STOCK VAR – $4.99
(W) Brandon Thomas (A) Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz (CA) Mateus Manhanini
Curtis Metcalf was the brightest shining star of Alva Industries, a brilliant scientist mentored by Edwin Alva since childhood…until the failures of Alva technology at the Big Bang disaster threatened to destroy the company, and Alva needed a scapegoat. Now Curtis is on the run from the Dakota police department…but a man as smart—and paranoid—as Curtis takes precautions. With a nearly indestructible suit of armor and remarkable inventions that he never handed over to Alva, Curtis stands determined to do much more than clear his name…he’s going to take the fight back to Alva himself! Writer Brandon Thomas (Future State: Aquaman, Excellence) is joined by Hardware’s co-creator and Milestone founder Denys Cowan to open a legendary new chapter in the story of the Milestone Universe’s most complicated man! Is a better world on his mind? Or just a world built for him?
In Shops: 8/10/2021
SRP: $3.99

THE CREATORS BEHIND DC COMICS’ HARDWARE REBOOT ON WHY THE MILESTONE HERO IS ‘AS VITAL AS EVER’

Contributed by Matthew Jackson Aug 9, 2021, 9:28 AM EDT

This week, the first round of new series launches in the Milestone Returns line at DC Comics draws to a close with Hardware: Season One, a relaunch for the brilliant, armor-designing title character helmed by writer Brandon Thomas and artist Denys Cowan. Like the other relaunch titles, Static: Season One and Icon and Rocket: Season One, Hardware merges newer comics talent with veteran contributors, in this case giving Thomas a chance to work with the artist who co-created Hardware alongside writer Dwayne McDuffie back in 1993.

Though Thomas has his own impressive bibliography covering both Big Two superhero titles and acclaimed creator-owned work, he was always aware that he was following in the footsteps of icons, as he explained last week during a press roundtable that SYFY WIRE attended.

“It’s a humbling, kind of sobering feeling. It is very surreal to me even now to see Hardware pages that Denys has drawn, showing up in the email, and I’m like, ‘Wow, did I write this?’ It’s a very kind of like out of body experience sometimes,” Thomas said. “I try to do my best with every project that I do, obviously, but this one is a little more…It’s a little heavier, it takes a little more time, a little more thought, because I just want to really do a great job. Because there’s an additional level of responsibility for this project and these characters and this world, especially since Dwayne is not here with us anymore.”

McDuffie, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 49, is a figure whose legacy looms large over all of modern superhero comics, but particularly in Milestone stories. Like the writers of Static: Season One and Icon and Rocket: Season One, Thomas was following directly in McDuffie’s footsteps with Hardware, and he wanted to pay tribute to the late creator in a very direct way. Readers of Hardware: Season One #1 will find some key structural and thematic similarities to the original Hardware #1 in Thomas’ script, along with one particular monologue about a parakeet trying to escape the house it’s kept in that Thomas lifted directly from the original series in tribute to McDuffie.

“The first script kind of starts off with me, and then it’s Dwayne, and then by the time you get to the end it’s Hardware,” Thomas explained.

For Cowan, who collaborated on the art for Hardware: Season One with the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz, coming back to the character he brought to life in 1993 was a very different experience, one more challenging than he’d perhaps anticipated. To hear him tell it, though, Thomas’ scripts made it all worth it.

“With Brandon writing, it’s certainly given it a whole different twist and I have to approach his stories differently. But what I will say is that the same spirit that Dwayne brought to it, or Dwayne and I brought to it, Brandon brings to Hardware, tenfold,” Cowan said. “It’s just brilliant writing. I can’t say enough. So it’s been an experience drawing Hardware again. but it’s been an experience in a way I didn’t expect. I thought I’d get back on, and people would be like, ‘Oh man, Denys Cowan’s back on Hardware!’ I didn’t know it’d be so hard, so challenging and yet so fulfilling. So that’s what it’s been like, getting back to this story. It’s been a great experience.”

Hardware is Curtis Metcalf, a brilliant inventor who caught the eye of wealthy scientist Edwin Alva. Alva took the child prodigy under his wing, gave him resources, and used his genius to build tremendous wealth and power. When Curtis, now an adult secretly using his spare time to become the superhero Hardware, asked for a larger piece of Alva Industries’ success, Alva turned on him. In the Milestone Returns continuity, the event known as the “Big Bang,” during which experimental chemicals killed numerous protestors and gave others (including Static) superpowers, marked the perfect opportunity for Alva to distance himself from his former protege. The chemicals, it turns out, were Alva Industries products, and Curtis turned out to be the perfect scapegoat.

“I wanted to reflect how it feels to think that you have something with another person, but once you get to the point where it feels like you are threatening, or you are encroaching on their status or their position, they can turn on you in an instant, and you had no indication that that is how that was going to go,” Thomas explained, calling the idea of “deserving” and Curtis’ own journey to feeling he deserved credit a major part of the book’s emotional core.

For Cowan, the meaning of the Curtis vs. Alva struggle also digs just a little deeper, back to the roots of Hardware as a character. Milestone Media was founded as an avenue for Black creators and other minority groups to build better representation in American superhero comics, and some of the frustration at the state of the industry at the time is reflected metaphorically through its early characters, Hardware included. For Cowan, a comics veteran who still remembers those early days, those metaphors still hold.

“It was a metaphor for our experiences in the comic industry as Black creators, which is not to put anybody down, but it’s really to tell the truth as we saw it about the glass ceiling that existed, about the way we were treated, and about exploitation and about, you know, using one’s talents and abilities to one’s best advantage,” Cowan said. “All those things are the core of the characters, so they’re all still the same.”

He continued, “Are we bringing that same kind of angst or whatever, anger, to the books now? I’m a different person in a way than I was 30 years ago. So the things that made me mad then just make me madder now [laughs]. So yeah, we are bringing the same things back. Until society changes, we’re going to still talk about all this stuff, right? Because it all means something. It’s all important. So, while I find myself not looking at some things the same way, I look at some of the things in a much sharper way. So it makes drawing his book as vital as ever, because all those things that made Dwayne and I so upset still exist, in society and in the comic book world.”

The backbone of Hardware: Season One is full of those exploitation metaphors, as Curtis tries to take the fight directly to his former benefactor even as Alva tries to declare him a public enemy. For Thomas, much of the first arc is about Curtis’ attempt to “rebuild himself emotionally” as he recovers from Alva’s betrayal, but the writer also stressed that this isn’t just a replay of the same struggle we read in 1993.

“There will be new things. There’ll be new characters and new threats, and some very familiar characters and threats to look out for in this first story arc,” Thomas said. “And I’ll just say, this first story is chiefly about Curtis and Alva, but it will also try to answer the question of: Hypothetically, let’s just say the Curtis and Alva thing is settled. Why does Curtis stay in the suit? So that will be a big part of what this story is about.”

Though Cowan — who’s one of the “producers” of the Milestone line overseeing the relaunch as well as taking on art duties — teased that discussions about Milestone Returns “Season 2” are already underway, no other titles in the line have yet been announced. For the moment, at least, Hardware: Season One stands as the concluding volume in an event that began last summer during DC FanDome, and has seen the successful return of several of Milestone’s most popular characters. It’s something some fans never thought they’d see at this scale again, and while Cowan is happy to have pulled it off, the artist also made sure to stress that readers are in for much more.

“It’s been extremely gratifying to see people’s responses, and I’m very excited about what we have to bring them, because we’ve all been working really hard on this stuff,” Cowan said. “And it’s good to see it finally, finally, coming to fruition and seeing people’s responses has been good. But people have no idea what’s in store for them. This has just been…the tip of the iceberg. What you’re going to see is stuff that’s going to literally, it’s going to make everybody in this panel room write us and go ‘You didn’t tell us about you was gonna do this! I can’t believe you guys did this!’ Because there’s going to be some…we want to do stuff that makes DC even go: ‘Are you guys sure you want to do this?’

“You have to challenge them,” he added. “How are they going to let us take them on this journey? So far, they let us take them pretty far.”

ICON & ROCKET SEASON ONE: HUDLIN, CHILLS AND BRAITHWAITE ADVANCE A DECADES-SPAN STORY FOR THE NEW ERA OF MILESTONE

D.R. Bickham

The Milestone Comics era has returned with a new series of titles featuring many of the characters first introduced when the company began in 1993. An imprint of DC Comics, Milestone’s mission was to introduce minority and marginalized characters into the world of comics. comics and was spearheaded by legendary creators such as Dwayne McDuffie and Reginald Hudlin. The company’s best-known property is the superhero Static, who, like the other Milestone characters, has been integrated into the main DC universe. The Electric Wielding Hero has recently won his own series, Static season one, and several other Milestone properties are following suit, including fan-favorite character Icon.

In celebration of Icon and Rocket Season OneIn its upcoming debut on July 27, CBR participated in a panel discussion with three of the creators working on the comic: the venerable Reginald Hudlin (Black Panther), Leon Chills (Shadow Force) and artist Doug Braithwaite (Punisher). The series revolves around the enormously powerful alien icon who lives as an African American after assuming the guise of the slaves who found him in the 19th century. In the present day, young Rocket convinces him to become a hero with her as his partner.

Related: REVIEW: Static Season One # 1 Is An Electric Relaunch For The Hero.

One of the first questions asked of the creative team was directed at Hudlin, asking if a significant amount of time would be spent developing the slavery aspect of Icon’s origin story. “Icon has been on Earth for 150 years,” Hudlin responded. “We will not be telling stories single about his early childhood during slavery in America. Its history will span decades and we will show it in many amazing places across the map. “

The conversation shifted to the possibility of other characters from the broader Milestone universe appearing on the series, and again Hudlin, who is the series co-writer with Chills, was quick to respond. “Anything can happen,” he replied. “We have a lot of plans for many seasons with Icon, Rocket, Static and Hardware, and we are introducing new characters and new stories. Still, we haven’t finished writing everything yet, so I can’t say decisively. What’s going to happen. But I can say that you will see a lot of interesting things as we go through the series. “

Related: Icon: How Milestone’s Black Superman Influenced A True Supreme Court Justice.

After mentioning that he has plans for the broader Milestone universe, Hudlin shared the conversations he had with the creators of the other books that are also being relaunched, particularly Static season one Y Hardware. “Milestone was initially successful because it was cutting edge,” began the veteran writer. “If we were to reproduce that success, we had to be avant-garde for this generation. This meant finding new voices like Vita Ayala and Nikolas Draper-Ivey who write and draw. Static and Brandon Thomas, who writes Hardware.

“Denys Cowan and I had a pretty solid vision of what we want these characters to do and how to reintroduce them to the world. But we are so happy to see these writers take those initial ideas, run with them, and take them to new and exciting places. It’s a great team of people working towards the big picture we have in mind so that all the characters and stories intersect at certain times. At the same time, you can read each individual series and enjoy them without losing track of what’s going on. But we think that as you read, you will want to see the other books. “

Although co-writer Leon Chills and artist Doug Braithwaite were silent for much of the discussion, they both chimed in when the issue of Rocket’s status as Icon’s partner was broken, particularly the question of whether they were taking a non-traditional approach. Braithwaite confirmed that everyone viewed the relationship differently. Chills expounded: “Rocket doesn’t feel like a traditional partner. She has more agency than the regular partner, and she questions and challenges Icon in a way that I haven’t seen from other partners. It definitely feels more like a partnership, with them on their feet. of equality, that she being his buddy. “

As the artist on the series, Braithwaite was asked if there were any nuances to be aware of when considering the finite beginning and end of the series. “I’m just telling the story as succinctly as I can and making the points that Reggie and Leon are trying to make stand out to readers, old and new,” replied the artist. “There is a bit of pressure in that regard. This is a very strong piece of writing, and I think it is a very important project to work on.”

“That is why I am so excited to be working with Doug,” added Hudlin. “In the world of comics, the artist is really the director. Leon and I get the work done, but Doug is the person who brings it to life. He always meets or exceeds our expectations for storytelling, and he’s a pleasure to collaborate with. ” After thanking Hudlin, Braithwaite spoke more about the synergy between him and the writers. “It’s easy for me to visualize and interpret what the writers are trying to convey and what they want to see on the page. The characterizations are really strong and I love them.”

As the discussion drew to a close, the creators were asked which comics they read for their own pleasure. “I’m a huge Mark Millar fan so I’m always going to read whatever he’s posting,” Hudlin said. “I also really enjoy Brian Michael Bendis and Ryan Sook Legion of superheroes, and I will always come back and read the classic Jack Kirby for inspiration again. “Braithwaite quoted the legendary writer and artist as well.” I tend to go for the classic Kirby project collections from the 60s and 70s. Those stories bring back the best memories and I love reliving those experiences. “

Icon and Rocket Season One is written by Reginald Hudlin and Leon Chills and with illustrations by Doug Braithwaite. The first issue goes on sale July 27 from DC Comics.

Read on: Static’s first superhero battle has disastrous consequences.

CREATORS BEHIND ICON AND ROCKET REVIVAL ON THE ‘EMPOWERMENT STORY’ AT THE HEART OF MILESTONE RELAUNCH

Contributed by: Matthew JacksonJul 27, 2021, 10:23 AM EDT

In 1993, amid the highly influential first wave of Milestone Media comics titles, writer Dwayne McDuffie and artist M.D. Bright introduced the story of a super-powered alien who’d been living as a black man on Earth since the days of slavery, and the streetwise young woman who helped make him into a superhero. Now, nearly 30 years later, Icon and Rocket are back in the second series emerging from DC Comics’ Milestone Returns relaunch, and co-writer Reginald Hudlin still remembers the storytelling principles laid out by McDuffie all those years ago.

“I just remember having conversations about Icon and Rocket with Dwayne, and he gave such a beautiful definition of why the concept worked,” Hudlin told a group of journalists, including SYFY WIRE, last week. “He described them as a unity of opposites: Male/female, young/old, human/alien, conservative/progressive, and that’s exactly right. It’s such a perfect pair because they’ve got nothing in common except they care. Icon [gets] pushed out of his cynicism by a young, naive but passionate Rocket. And I just thought ‘Well that’s just a great dynamic, period.’ And if you add superpowers to it, it’s even better.”

MORE MILESTONE MEDIA

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Co-written by Hudlin and Leon Chills and drawn by Doug Braithwaite, Icon and Rocket: Season One retains that “unity of opposites” dynamic with its first issue, reintroducing readers to the buttoned down, conservative Augustus Freeman, aka Icon, and the more liberal, more impulsive Raquel Ervin, aka Rocket. Back in 1993, the two first met when she broke into his house with a few of her friends, and while their new origin story reflects some of that original structure, Hudlin and Chills also put effort into updating the circumstances and the approach for 21st century readers.

“When I went back and reread that first issue, there’s a whole section where they’re walking through the city and debating political philosophies between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, which very much reflected that moment,” Hudlin said. “So we sat down and I said ‘OK, here’s all the great stuff from the original issue, and here’s all this new stuff we want to put in,’ and it was like, ‘Oh, that’s about 40, 50 pages.’ So, I really focused on, ‘OK, how do we tell something different so it’s exciting for new readers, but for the original fans, they get to see things that are different [and] more nuanced?’ So we had to make some new choices. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be revisiting stuff later on in future issues.”

Those new choices also mean a somewhat new look for the title characters, drawn by Braithwaite with design input from original Milestone co-founder Denys Cowan, to give the characters a somewhat more modern feel.

“The whole style of comic superheroes costumes has changed so much,” Braithwaite said. “I mean,the ’90s was a pretty drastic period in regards to costume design. Even though Icon’s costume was quite streamlined compared to a lot of books that were coming out at the time, it didn’t have the shoulder pads, it didn’t have knee pads, gun belts or anything like that. It was really kind of a striking costume. But I think obviously, this is the 21st century now, so you have to kind of bring it up to date slightly. I think the look works. The color scheme for the costume works really well. And I’ve just seen the colors for the second issue where you actually see him in his full costume for the first time and it looks really striking on the page.”

Icon and Rocket arrives at a big moment for Milestone, just weeks after the arrival of Static: Season One and weeks ahead of the launch of Hardware: Season One, placing Milestone and its characters at the forefront of comics once again amid a busy publishing summer. For Chills, who made the leap from television to comics to work on this book, it’s all part of a bigger moment for Black superheroes, one he hopes to make part of his life’s work.

“I think the more I write, the more I’m realizing I feel like my purpose as a writer is to put Black characters at the forefront of genres that they’re usually pushed to the side in,” Chills said. “And unfortunately, the superhero genre is definitely one of those, and so to be able to be a part of telling the story of Black superheroes is just amazing. And the special thing about these heroes in particular as well is that they were also created by a Black creator so it’s an honor to continue the story that [McDuffie] was telling and bring it to new audiences.”

Like the other Milestone Returns titles on DC Comics’ slate, Icon and Rocket exists as a re-imagining not just of individual heroes, but of a larger universe. While they’re not necessarily giving everything away upfront, Hudling, Chills, and Braithwaite did tease that we can look forward to everything from new characters to new looks back at Icon’s presence in American history along this journey. At its core, though, Hudlin emphasized once again the power of that original dynamic dreamed up by McDuffie three decades ago.

“When you do stuff like this, you go ‘OK, this is the last story I get to tell, not just about Icon and Rocket, but just period.’ If this is my last will and testament as a storyteller, you want it to have everything,” Hudlin said. “And I feel like it deals with our heritage historically at the same time it deals with kind of broad philosophical issues. But more importantly, it’s an empowerment story. It’s about this teenage Black girl who takes charge of her life and changes her direction and makes an ally out of one of the most powerful beings on earth, and I just thought ‘Who doesn’t want to see that?’ That feels good. And she focuses on how to change the world around her, and Icon’s mission is ‘Let me use this as a teaching lesson for you to really understand how the world really works.’ I just think that is an exciting story that I’d certainly want to read and that’s always where I start as a storyteller.”

Icon and Rocket: Season One #1 is in stores now.